Yesterday, BSNL CMD is stated to have told the media that the loss to BSNL is due to the huge wage bill to the extent of 46% and if VRS for one lakh employees is implemented it will save about Rs. 2400 crore annually, a 16% savings in wage bill. While giving his recommendations, Sam Pitroda has suggested a similar line. The government is also thinking on the same lines. Interestingly some of the workers also seem to be toeing the same line falling prey to the continuous pro-VRS campaign by the management and the media.
What is the truth and what are the facts? It is not the number of employees which is responsible for the loss. When there were about 3.5 lakh workers during the period 2001 to 2007, BSNL was earning profit from Rs. 3,000 to 10,000 crore. Now only there are about 2,76,000 including ITS and Group A officers. About 75,000 workers are less.
The percentage of the wage bill to the revenue has increased mainly due to the reduction in the revenues. Due to the cancellation of procurement of equipments, the anti-PSU policy of the government and the utter inefficiency of the top management, the revenue of the company has been continuously declining. It happened mainly after the cancellation of the tender of 45 million mobile equipments in 2007 by the BSNL Board. The revenue reduced from Rs. 40,176 in 2005-06 to Rs 39715 in 2006-2007, to Rs.38046 in 2007-08 to Rs. 812 in 2008-2009, to Rs. 32,045 in 2009-10, and then to Rs.29,687 in 2010-2011. If the revenue has increased or at least was maintained at the 2006-2007level, then the % of wage will have been almost stagnant.
Who is responsible for the loss of revenue. While the operational charges have been increasing, why the revenue has not gone up? It is the callous attitude of the top management, who are mainly ITS officers, who are only deputationists and are not stake holders of the company. There was about Rs. 40,000 surplus cash in the banks, but they failed to utilise it for expansion purposes. Equipments like cables, broadband modem, telephone instruments etc. which were very essential for development and expansion were not purchased. marketing was a complete failure. The top management sat in their offices without any consideration of the expansion of business. As leaders they utterly failed to take the workers with them. They took all benefits and conveniences by spending the funds of the company, like purchasing costly cars, taking membership in the costly clubs, travelling in the First class on foreign tours ( which is 16 times charge of the economic class) even one or to weeks before retirement, staying in star hotels in domestic tours instead of in BSNL IQs which are cheap, conducting conferences of Circle heads, district heads, TAC etc. in star hotels, taking all kinds of allowances like tea allowance, newspaper allowance, LTC in helicopters, looting in the name of Temporary advances, hiring of large number of cars without any benefit to the company, avoidable modification of buildings costing crores of rupees, renting buildings for offices while there were large number of available BSNL buildings etc. costing BSNL unnecessary expenditure of thousands of crores of rupees. The hundreds of top-level officers joining the rival private telcos immediately after their retirement shows the standard of their integrity to say the least. Somebody pointed out that some of the top officers were getting salary from BSNL for working, at the same time they were getting money from private companies for not working. Indeed, BSNL rose up to the first three in corruption at all India level. Are the ordinary workers responsible for all these? They are the same workers who got more revenue for the company all these years. Instead of accepting the responsibility for the decline of the revenue which is entirely due to them, the top management wants to sent out the employees out of the company to cover their failure. For what? To prepare for the privatisation of the company.
There are many other points against VRS, but it can be stated later. As seen above, it is not the salary bill of the employees but the decline in revenue is the reason for the loss. The government or management has no plan to increase the revenue. It is only trying to reduce the expenditure on wage bill, which is a direct attack on the workers. By the way, the ratio of the wages of the top management officer and the worker at the lowest scale has increased from 6-7 % to 10-15%.
Let us expose the vicious propaganda being spread by the management and tell the facts to the workers.
VAN Namboodiri's Blog 
Comarade,
All the facts narrated by you absolutely correct, but we as BSNL workers collectevily take responsibility for failure of mobilising mass movement against all these negative policies of indian government. particularly the current leadership of BSNLEU’s failure to gain the confident of workers as done under your leadership as general secretary of BSNLEU.